Investigation of the Interaction Between Process Signals and Modeled Thermomechanical Energy in Generating Gear Grinding
Mariana Mendes Wilfinger
Summary
Generating gear grinding is a high-productivity gear manufacturing process commonly used to meet high requirements of surface quality and integrity. The amount of material deformation involved in the process leads to high energy requirements, which manifests mainly in terms of thermal and mechanical loads. The thermal loads account for the majority of the generated energy, and pose a risk to the surface integrity through the occurrence of grinding burn. The association between energy generation and occurrence of grinding burn challenges the optimization of process parameters without compromising part quality. In order to quantitatively assess the energy generation during grinding as a way of optimizing process parametrization, a model developed by LĂ–HRER allows the calculation of the energy in generating gear grinding based on the micro-interaction characteristics of the process.
Although the actual energy generated in the process cannot be measured instantly, it is possible to extract instant power signals from most grinding machines. Thus, the aim of this report is to develop an approach to investigate the correlations between processing energy and machine spindle power signals during grinding, as a means to connect the theoretical energy model to practical in-process monitoring. The approach is based on the treatment of the signal and subsequent extraction of its characteristic features, in order to later apply statistical correlation coefficients as a mean to investigate the relationships between energy and power during the process. With the application of this method, it will be possible to understand the effects of the calculated energy on the real time power signals, and subsequently establish a relationship between them.